Chapter 10 - JONATHAN’S DNA
The DNA results arrived forty-eight hours later.
Jonathan called me before I opened mine.
“You ready?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
We opened them together over video with counselors from the testing service available to explain.
The conclusion was clear.
Jonathan Hale and I were not brothers.
Not half brothers.
Not close relatives.
I stared at the screen.
A strange grief moved through me.
I had known him for three days.
Yet some part of me had already imagined forty missing birthdays.
Jonathan exhaled.
“Well.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“I brought this into your life.”
He smiled sadly.
“You didn’t put my DNA in a database.”
Fair.
The result answered one major question.
Jonathan was not James.
The resemblance was coincidence amplified by hope.
My mother had chased the wrong man.
Vanessa had secretly tested the wrong man.
And I had almost allowed myself to believe him into being my brother.
Jonathan asked one final question.
“Do you still want to know who I am?”
“Only if you do.”
He did.
But that became his investigation.
Not mine.
We agreed to stay in occasional contact because something strange had happened between us.
Not brotherhood.
Humanity.
Then my own DNA report revealed another fact.
The preserved tissue sample from the deceased infant was available for comparison through lawful procedures.
If usable, it could determine whether the deceased child and I were identical twins, fraternal twins, or something else.
That mattered because my mother’s records listed identical twins.
Testing took longer.
Meanwhile, Vanessa’s behavior toward Sophie remained under review.
I canceled our engagement formally.
She moved into her father’s house.
She called every day.
I stopped answering unless the subject involved the investigation.
Then she sent a voice message.
“I remembered where Sophie found the key.”
I called.
“Where?”
“My jewelry box.”
“You said your purse.”
“I was scared.”
“Which version is true?”
“Jewelry box.”
“Why was Sophie near it?”
“She followed me upstairs.”
“What happened?”
Vanessa cried.
“I opened the box. She saw the key. She grabbed it.”
“And you hit her.”
Silence.
“Say it.”
“I slapped her.”
My jaw clenched.
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you threaten her?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I thought if you opened that room, you’d discover what I did.”
“What did you do?”
Another silence.
Then:
“I destroyed one of your mother’s letters.”
My anger shifted.
“Why?”
“It accused my father.”
“Of what?”
“I don’t know. I burned it before finishing.”
“You expect me to believe that?”
“I panicked.”
Her favorite word.
“What did you read?”
Vanessa whispered:
“Eleanor wrote that Martin switched the bracelets.”
My skin went cold.
“What bracelets?”
“Yours and James’s.”
That did not mean a child survived.
It meant my mother suspected the names assigned to the twins were reversed.
Then Vanessa said:
“There was one sentence I remember exactly.”
I waited.
“Martin knows which son we buried.”
May you like
My breath stopped.
📖 Jonathan was definitively not my brother, but my mother’s destroyed letter suggested Martin knew whether the dead infant was actually James—or whether I had lived forty years under my brother’s name. 👇
